TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- Nick Saban can’t escape it, not even when he sits down for a family dinner.

The
Alabama coach is 61, and he’s been through hundreds of losses
throughout his 40-year coaching career. Handling them -- even though the
stakes are seemingly higher than when he began his college head
coaching career at Toledo -- hasn’t grown any more difficult, Saban
said, but it certainly isn’t any easier.

“My
wife's mad. My kids are upset. Everybody. I am, too,” Saban said. “But
how am I going to affect everybody around me so that we respond the
right way to the circumstance that we're in?

“It's keeping the focus on the vision of what you want to accomplish, not the circumstance.”

The circumstances are fairly cut and dry after Alabama’s 29-24 loss Saturday to Texas A&M.

The
Crimson Tide controls its fate within the conference, as a victory over
Auburn in the season finale will pit it against No. 5 Georgia in the
SEC Championship. It gets murky from there, as Kansas State, Oregon and
Notre Dame sit in front of the No. 4 Crimson Tide in the latest BCS
standings with three weeks remaining.

Winning
out, starting with Saturday’s early kick at Bryant-Denny Stadium
against Western Carolina, guarantees nothing more than an appearance in
the Sugar Bowl. A trip to Miami for the national championship will
require three more wins and some help from others.

“It
depends on how important it is to everybody to sort of stay focused on
the vision of what they want to accomplish because that sort of affects
your intensity, your mental energy and all those types of things,” Saban
said. “Obviously, we didn’t sustain it as well as we wanted to – and
now we have to deal with the consequences of that and respond to the
consequences of that in the right way.

“Now we don’t control what happens. But we can control what we do.”

At
a Monday press conference that preceded a lighter-than-usual afternoon
practice, Saban didn’t reflect on many specifics from the Texas A&M
loss. Rather, he focused on the previous two weeks, which lacked the
proper focus and execution required to achieve the kind of goals a team
like Alabama carries.

The
Crimson Tide was good enough at the end of its 21-17 victory at LSU to
escape with its biggest win of the season, but it never could dig out of
the 20-0, first quarter hole it experienced against the Aggies.

In Saban’s eyes, they were one in the same.

“We
didn’t play well as a team,” Saban said. “You guys don’t think so
because we won one and lost the other one. If we’d won this one, you
wouldn’t be concerned, either. I was concerned then.

“But you all live in the results world, we kind of live in the process world. It’s hard to get people to respond.”

Saban labeled this type of thinking as the “Bluegrass Miracle phenomenon.”

It
refers to the improbable victory LSU picked up at Kentucky in 2002 on a
miracle, 75-yard touchdown pass on the game’s final play. The
understandably frantic celebration overshadowed what Saban, then LSU’s
coach, saw as a lackluster performance against an inferior opponent.

Seven days later, LSU lost at home to Alabama, 31-0.

“You
play bad, you win the game,” Saban said. “Then the next week you get
your ass kicked because nobody responded to playing bad.”

Evidence
of a response could be found immediately after Texas A&M
quarterback Johnny Manziel took a knee Saturday to seal Alabama’s fate.

Senior linebacker Nico Johnson said he, quarterback AJ McCarron and senior guard Chance Warmack
stood up in the locker room after the game and reminded the team that
all was not lost. Yes, the Crimson Tide's hopes of repeating as national
champions had taken a significant hit, but the dream certainly wasn't
dead.

Crazier
things have happened, and Alabama’s players -- at least the ones who
were on last year’s squad -- know it better than anybody.

"The
hope for playing for the national championship is slim to none, but we
have to go out and play our best ball," Johnson said. "We haven’t played
our best ball the last couple of weeks and it showed.”

The message was received loud and clear, running back Eddie Lacy said.

“We’re
just focused on now and what we have ahead, not on Miami,” Lacy said.
“If we take care of everything, Miami will take care of itself.”